Almost a week after the snowfall captured in my previous post, we had another overnight snowfall allowing me to capture the portraits of Kyle cavorting in a local park the next day [also in a previous post], and to capture the snow up close and personal, rather than from the warmth and dry of my home.

Below are some of the other photos I captured.

For those who might be interested, I have work available for sale as open editions on RedBubble [unframed photographic prints, matted, framed and canvas prints], as well as postcards, greeting cards, and calendars.

Calendars are available for any starting month, and I'm more than happy to create custom calendars of my work, should you like!

Most of my self-portraiture is only available as limited edition prints, so please contact me directly if you're interested in any on RedBubble that are not for sale; or if there are any other images of mine you have seen on my blog or website that you would like to purchase that aren't on RedBubble.

Additionally, if you would prefer a signed print or a limited edition print, please also feel free to contact me for details.

If you're lucky it might snow in some alpine areas a couple of hours out of the city (see Victorian and New South Wales snowfields), but mostly you only see snow if you go hunting for it, and rarely do you ever see it actually falling. If need be, the holiday resorts manufacture their own snow so that they can maintain a ski season in years when the snowfall isn't up to par.

I think the first time I saw snow was in about sixth grade when my parents took us away for a day to the Victorian snowfields, and my brothers and I had our first experience of throwing snowballs at each other, making a snowman, and just generally mucking about in the snow. I can't recall ever attempting to ski, but my memory may be fuzzy on this.

Apart from that, and being sleeted upon in November 2006 whilst tramping around the Tongariro Crossing area of New Zealand (I wasn't brave enough to climb the scree with Hugh and Jamie, who subsequently got properly snowed upon), my heaviest actual snowfall experienced previously was pretty piddling - a flurry in Birmingham city centre a couple of weeks after arriving in the UK in 1999, and a similarly brief "white Christmas" in Newcastle a few weeks later.

Even in the 2.5 years I lived here previously, most of the snow I experienced was already on the ground; including waking up one morning to go to work between the Christmas and New Year holidays to walk out of my front door in Reading and stop on the doorstep utterly perplexed at what confronted me. It took a good couple of beats before my sleep-deprived brain registered "It snowed!" Having snowed overnight whilst we slept, I had still not been snowed upon, good and proper; and since I had to work, I left my housemate and my then-boyfriend to run around in said snow in their boxer shorts throwing snowballs at each other whilst I attempted to venture into town without falling on my arse.

So you can imagine that I was pretty excited by actual snow, actually falling, at the start of February right outside my house. There were a few preliminary flurries over the weeks leading up to it, but I'd managed to blink and miss every single one. And given the windows to my bedroom are quite high up, and mostly obscured from view by the sloping loft conversion ceiling when I'm sitting at my desk, it was only because I was talking with my housemates at the time and my landlady mentioned it, that I even noticed.

Suffice to say, despite the cold, I grabbed my camera and wandered out to try to catch some photos - some at the beginning of the snowfall from the footpath outside my house, the rest from the warmth and dry of my bedroom, the landing, the kitchen and lounge.

I even woke at random points through the night to check if it was still snowing (eg. 4:30am and again at 8:30am), and shooting off some more photos.

My landlady and housemates were not so excited by the prospect of snow, with concerns about driving and potential flight delays. And though I worried about the impact it would have on Kyle's arrival (it caused slight additional delay); and knew that the novelty would pass once I had to venture out, once the snow had turned to sludge, and when the pure white snowfall was discoloured by so many neighbourhood dogs' urine, I think my inner tourist was showing.

Last year was not my best year for a number of reasons. Though there were highlights like moving to London, and undertaking a one month residency at Hospitalfield, overall last year I was not at my emotional, mental or artistic best.

Maybe it's because I've been voluntarily unemployed since January 1 [though technically I'm self-employed; and even without that, when opting to temp, when not actually on an assignment you're not technically 'unemployed', you're 'between jobs'], and Kyle's recent visit has definitely played a part, but I'm currently feeling pretty optimistic about the year ahead.

Aside from my annual new year mantra which I took up a number of years ago now to "make this one count", I've also resolved to shut out the "noise" this year, and just get on with it.

By this I mean, think, care and worry less about what others are doing and saying (within both my personal and professional lives), and also know when to shut out my own internal "noise".

I let too much peripheral "stuff" get to me and distract me from the important things last year, and I wasted a lot of time and energy being caught up with all of that. I don't want to waste any more energy on those negative elements this year.

The most important thing to me is to do what I want to do with my photography; do what I enjoy and makes me happy. Focus on what I want, and what I want to do, and block out all the rest.

I was almost entirely unaware of it until late in the day on our travels around the Tower of London and then Trafalgar Square on the Wednesday after Kyle arrived, but whilst I was snapping off shots of the sights around London, often Kyle was snapping off shots of me [as well as myriad shots of the sights].

Only when going through our shots on our respective computers or on the LCDs later in the day did I realise exactly how many shots of me he was taking. Mostly captured as I was taking photos, or perusing what I'd taken on my LCD, or wandering ahead of him here and there. He was actually shooting me here as I shot him, I believe.

I usually dislike being photographed by other people, especially candidly, but he managed to capture quite a few that I really like [including some very odd ones]; though there are also many of me, as I turned to find him aiming his camera at me once more, with an "Oi! Quit that!" look on my face.

Between his recent visit and his random screenshots from our Skype conversations, I think his collection of photos of me might now have exceeded that of my parents, though would still run second to my thousands of self-portraits.

He also captured some excellent images of subjects other than me during his stay, including some taken on a reconnaissance around the cottage we stayed in, that I didn't go on [I was enjoying a rare lie-in, savouring the warmth of our cosy bed as the sun rose].

Admittedly I was a bit rubbish on the exploration side, as the cold was getting to me, and my trainers really weren't appropriate footwear for clambering over fences and clomping through mud and snow. Add to that the cold I came down with [and still have!] on the Monday after we arrived in County Durham and I was a bit reluctant to venture too far from the car if I didn't have to.

I'm ashamed to say I didn't even manage any self-portraits whilst we were away, as we were also so rarely at the cottage we rented, as we had long days exploring the local regions and were usually knackered by the time we finally returned in the evenings, with only enough energy for imbibing a few cans of cider and Guinness, respectively, and a few quick games of Monopoly.